USPTO management and workers AGREE: S.1145 on patent reform is flawed

Senators should note that both the USPTO administration AND the USPTO examiners' union [POPA] are opposing the current patent reform bill and thus senators should figure out that something is still wrong with the bill.

Of the union, ag-ip noted on 10 Feb:

The Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) has joined several other major labor unions in opposition to the Patent Reform Act of 2007, S. 1145. According to a press release by POPA, the coalition of unions sent a letter to every US Senator. In addition, POPA has signed with over 485 other corporations, associations and unions in a full page advertisement that ran in the newspaper Roll Call when the Senate went back in session.

Of the Bush administration and of the USPTO, Bioworld had noted:

The Bush administration in a six-page "views" letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, outlined its objections to a patent reform bill awaiting Senate approval.

(...)

While the administration supports legislation that would improve the patent system, the current version of S. 1145 "does not do that," insisted Jon Dudas, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

"In some ways, it undermines innovation, particularly in the damages provision," he asserted during a Feb. 5 media briefing.

See also:


Is patent reform going forward, or not?

See also:

USPTO pledges to rethink patent targets which includes a quote by Robert Budens about "serious government doublespeak."

Along this line, note the discussion by LBE in 88 J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Soc'y 743 (footnote 8):

At some level, the use of the word "continuation" to mean more than one thing reminds one of Raffles v. Wichelhaus, 2 H.&C. 906, 159 Eng. Rep. 375 (Ex. 1864), wherein there was one contract mentioning the ship Peerless but two different ships called Peerless. Note MARVIN A. CHIRELSTEIN, CONCEPTS AND CASE ANALYSIS IN THE LAW OF CONTRACTS 87 (4th ed. 2001)[observing that Raffles "highlights the fallibility or variability of language itself and the possibility that the parties to a contract may use the same words to express quite different aims and expectations"]. However, there is no excuse for Science to use the same word to refer to different concepts in the same paragraph.

referring to an article in the journal Science --> Eli Kintisch, U.S. Wants to Curtail Add-On Patents to Reduce Backlog, 313 Science 425, 427 (28 July 2006).